Plastic wallpaper mainly has a surface layer of soft polyvinyl chloride (PVC). However, PVC evolves hydrogen chloride gas on combustion and suffers from surface stains due to bleeding of a plasticizer.
In order to overcome these disadvantages, substitution of soft PVC by an ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA) has been proposed as disclosed in JP-A-58-4879 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"). While the wallpaper having an EVA surface layer improves the problems of safety and surface stains due to plasticizer bleeding as compared with the wallpaper having a PVC surface layer, it involves different disadvantages, such as poor strength and odor due to a residual vinyl acetate monomer, and is still unsatisfactory as a wall covering.